Catheters are used in conjunction with various procedures to diagnose and treat systems of the body, particularly the vascular system. Guide wires are used to aid in the insertion of catheters into the body and to evaluate the vessel along which the catheter will travel. In general, a guide wire is inserted into a body system such as a blood vessel and the vessel is probed with the guide wire. The catheter is slipped over the guide wire and the guide wire is withdrawn. The catheter is then eased through the vessel to the desired location.
For proper manipulation and control of the guide wire during insertion, the operator must be able to tactilely feel the end of the guide wire within the vessel. For selectively placing a guide wire in a particular corridor of a body system such as a blood vessel, guide wires with flexible end portions are employed. J-shaped guide wires are particularly useful for maneuvering through curves and junctures of branched portions of a body system.
To position the guide wire at a particular location within the body, it is useful to have a means of detecting the location of the tip of the guide wire. To this end, guide wires may be marked at intervals along their length, wound with a dense metal such as platinum, gold or tungsten to provide radiopacity for detection by fluoroscopy, or other such marking technique. At present, however, there are no guide wires with self-contained sensor components that would permit determination of the location of the guide wire tip after it has been inserted into the patient without the use of fluoroscopy.
It would be desirable to have a guide wire with an internally-housed sensor for locating the distal section of the guide wire within the body. It would also be desirable to design such a guide wire to have the tactile response to enable the operator to manipulate and sense the progress of the leading end of the guide wire during insertion and placement in the body, particularly through branched channels of a the cardiovascular system.
Therefore, an object of the invention is to provide a guide wire apparatus with an internally-housed sensor element for detection of the guide wire position in the body, a further object is to provide a guide wire with a sensor that has the tactile response of a conventional non-sensor guide wire. Another object is to provide a method of using the guide wire apparatus for detecting obstructions in the body, as for example, the vascular system.